Response to Etlin's "Beyond" in art

I just finished the readings for next week and I have to admit that they were not easy. I read the Etlin reading last and found it to be a bit confusing, but also the most interesting.Specifically, the section of the reading titled, "Night and the Beyond" pages 11-13, which goes over Etlin's third set of conditions about Existential Space. 

"...the spatial sense of self whereby we have the impression of having a bounded spatial being which extends outside the body but nonetheless is contained within some actual physical boundary within view, beyond which lies a spatial realm that becomes the locus of the unknown or the unfathomable" page 11.

I found the topic of Romanticism and existential space interesting because Romantic art produced seems to transcend the viewer through empathy and visual cues. For example, the meaning and space of a landscape painting changes dramatically once a figure is inserted into the composition. The viewer empathizes with the figure and crosses over to further imagine the "beyond".

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818

The nineteenth century artist Caspar David Friedrich is referred to by Etlin and is the main artist I think of when Romanticism is brought up. 

If Friedrich did not have the figure of the Wanderer in the composition the viewer's feeling of space would completely change. We would not have an empathetic connection to him, but would immediately become him, we would be metaphorically be looking through his eyes at nature. The figure heightens our senses and awareness of the sublime landscape by the use of our imaginations. 

Below are two pictures taken of the falls at Yosemite National Park. Although the pictures are different I would argue that the picture on the top is an example of what Etlin is talking about when he refers to the body and existential space and the "beyond" because it includes a figure.